ON BOARD PRIME MINISTER’S SPECIAL PLANE: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has said that ENI (Energy National Hydrocarbon), the world’s sixth largest oil and gas company has shown interest to participate in the privatization of Pakistan Petroleum Limited (PPL).

“This is the big news,” Prime Minister Aziz told reporters after wrapping up his visit to Rome. “ENI is one of the biggest companies in Italy and its chairman told me that they were going to participate in the privatization of PPL,” the prime minister said.

He said that he had a meeting with ENI chairman and they had said that they would participate in the privatization of PPL.

“And that they told me that we are going to participate in the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project as well,” he said.

“ENI is a huge group. They have many companies which are pipeline experts, they have undertaken big pipeline projects in the world.”

Pakistan’s Ambassador to Italy, Qamar Baig Mirza said ENI had also shown interest in equity participation of the pipeline project.

The prime minister said that he had asked his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi and the ENI chairman to participate in the project as contractors as well as equity partners.

He said that the Italians had played a major role in hydro-electric projects and that he had asked Mr Berlusconi to encourage the corporate sector in Italy to come and invest in new power generation projects including Tarbela and Ghazi Barotha.

“I assured them that there will be level-playing field and open bids and no sweet-heart deals,” he said.

He said that Berlusconi was effusive in his praise for Pakistan’s turnaround in the economic field. The Italian prime minister told him that Pakistan’s performance also figured during discussions at the recent G-8 meeting in Scotland.

Mr Aziz said that he had asked Prime Minister Berlusconi to encourage Italy’s private sector to relocate their industries in Pakistan instead of shutting them down to outsource their value-added products. “This is a win-win situation for both of us,” he told his Italian counterpart.